Yeah, I've thought about buying one in the past, but $229 is kind of rich for my blood.

I bought an ODROID-Go Ultra a few months ago for about $70. This can emulate the NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, and oodles of other consoles, and can play what are arguably some of the best games ever made. The Playdate is three times that price, and while I'm sure that some of the games are fun, I would have a hard time believing that any of them are beating Donkey Kong Country or Phantasy Star IV.

It might be an apples and oranges comparison, but in my mind they still occupy a similar niche.

If its any solace the screen is very good and the build quality is very high. You also just get a good set of games "for free" as part of the system.

I do think it's beyond "impulse buy" for sure, though.

Yea, you could get a similar experience (for some definition of similar) with Pico-8 which is also a constrained system.

Even better, the creator supports educators super cheap

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php?page=schools

Yea, it's not custom hardware, but you can share your creations with everyone since it runs on Web, Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and there are lots of cheaper devices that will run it if you want a handheld.

It's very low volume, sadly this was unavoidable I think, given the extremely custom nature of the input

I was thinking the same. Read the article, thought about getting one and then thought again

Bought mine for $179 when they were new, hadn’t realized the price went up so much.